Governance Assurance & Capital Stewardship
Owner risk has increased. Owner-side governance has not.
Where exposure rises, governance must follow.
Across capital-intensive assets, accountability remains firmly with owners even as control fragments across delivery partners, operators, and advisors. While execution is increasingly distributed, risk is not, owners retain ultimate responsibility for outcomes, compliance, and long-term value. This has created a widening gap between the exposure owners carry and the governance capacity available to manage it. This is not a cyclical shortage of skills or services, but a structural gap in how assets are governed once responsibility is dispersed, leaving owners accountable for decisions they do not fully control.
Why the need is growing
Why owners now carry greater exposure with reduced direct control
Why it matters | Owner accountability remains absolute, even as delivery and operational control fragments across multiple contractors, operators, and advisors. Risk that appears transferred through contracts or interfaces routinely returns to the owner, often late, aggregated, and without clear visibility or early warning. |
| Our role | To govern owner exposure by maintaining independent, owner-mandated oversight across fragmented delivery and operating environments, ensuring accountability, authority, and decision rights remain aligned. |
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Why delivery capability has advanced faster than owner control
| Why it matters | Execution disciplines, engineering, procurement, construction, and operations, have become increasingly sophisticated and optimised. Governance, however, is still commonly treated as an overlay rather than a control function. This imbalance allows approved intent to erode, decisions to drift, and value to leak, often incrementally and unnoticed until strategic outcomes are compromised. |
Our role | To restore balance by independently governing approved intent, performance, and accountability, separate from delivery incentives and structures. |
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Why modern assets require a distinct governance discipline
| Why it matters | Modern assets now operate within overlapping regulatory, social, commercial, and technical constraints, with risk distributed across long time horizons. This level of complexity has moved beyond what delivery-led or functionally siloed structures can effectively govern on behalf of owners, particularly where accountability spans approvals, ESG, and post-delivery obligations. |
Our role | To provide structured, owner-side governance that integrates risk, approvals, ESG, and long-term obligations into clear, defensible owner decisions, independent of delivery pressures. |
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Why governance questions are now surfacing at board level
| Why it matters | Boards are increasingly required to demonstrate clear control, accountability, and defensibility as material decisions are made across complex, multi-party delivery and operating environments. These questions reflect heightened scrutiny, regulatory expectation, and evolving standards of ownership, not shortcomings in execution capability, but a demand for stronger owner-side assurance. |
Our role | To support boards and executives by governing decision quality, accountability, and visibility across the full asset lifecycle, independent of delivery and operational pressures. |
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Owner-side governance addresses exposure where delivery structures cannot
By governing above execution, not within it
And where demand is strongest
Why existing approaches fall short
Fragmented accountability across advisors and operators
Limited early warning when control or intent begins to erode
The owner-side governance response
Owner-side governance replaces these substitutes with structured, independent control, applied where exposure actually sits, and maintained across the full asset lifecycle.
Let’s start a governance conversation
Discuss how independent oversight can strengthen control, reduce risk and protect long-term asset value.
Sarel Blaauw
senior partner
+61 498 785 165